The present invention relates to services provided to mobile end stations in a wireless network and, more particularly, management of the interface between the service provider and the mobile end stations.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional system wherein one or more hosts provide services to various mobile end stations 11 via the Internet, a wireless network and the air interface at 13.
FIG. 2 illustrates a conventional system similar to that of FIG. 1, except the hosts that provide the services to the mobile end stations 11 are peer applications located within the wireless network. The hosts provide services to the mobile end stations 11 via the wireless network and the air interface 13.
Many of the services provided by the hosts of FIGS. 1 and 2 are based on the use of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. Examples of services provided by the hosts include stock market reports, weather reports, and motor vehicle tracking/guidance. Examples of the mobile end stations 11 include interactive (2-way) pagers, mobile telephones, weather report computers, vehicle tracking computers, mobile terminals, and laptop computers with radio modems.
The wireless network of FIGS. 1 and 2 may use the conventional IP protocol as its network protocol, or it may use another conventional communication protocol as its network protocol. For example, the wireless network could be a conventional Mobitex wireless network, which does not use the IP protocol as its network protocol, or the wireless network could be a conventional CDPD (Cellular Digital Pocket Data) wireless network, which uses the IP protocol as its network protocol.
In FIG. 1, if one of the Internet hosts is running an IP application, then it sends IP traffic to specific IP addresses. The mobile end stations 11 typically include a database of addresses including IP addresses that authorize them to receive various services corresponding to their IP addresses. So all mobile end stations 11 having an IP address that matches the IP address specified by the IP traffic from the host will receive the service from the host as a group, in point-to-multipoint fashion.
If the wireless network does not use the IP protocol as its network protocol, then the primary address of each mobile end station is the network address assigned by the network protocol of the wireless network. IP addresses within the various mobile end stations of such a wireless network are herein referred to as secondary IP addresses of the mobile end stations.
If the wireless network does use the IP protocol as its network protocol, then each mobile end station will generally have a fixed primary IP address as assigned by the wireless network, and will also include further IP addresses which specify the services provided to the end station. These further IP addresses are also referred to herein as secondary IP addresses.
If a host in the FIG. 2 system is running an IP application but the wireless network does not use the IP protocol as its network protocol (e.g., the Mobitex network), then the network protocol of the wireless network must be used to convey the IP traffic from the host within the wireless network. This is conventionally accomplished using a gateway GW.
One problem with conventional systems such as shown in FIGS. 1 and 2 is the management of which of the aforementioned secondary IP addresses a particular mobile end station is authorized to use, that is, which services are to be received by which mobile end station. Because of the expense associated with the relatively scarce radio channel resources used in wireless networks, it is particularly important, for example, to be able to quickly add a mobile end station as a subscriber to a given service. Efficient control of which services are supplied to which mobile end stations also provides a bookkeeping tool for service providers.
Some conventional examples of how the aforementioned secondary IP addresses are provided in mobile end stations include (1) entering them in the SIM card of the end station, (2) entering them into the IP stack of, for example, a laptop computer, (3) using proprietary IP address management applications, or (4) entering them manually when the corresponding subscriptions are purchased. In order to use any of the aforementioned techniques for IP address management in a mobile end station, the mobile end station must disadvantageously be transported to a service center. The aforementioned techniques are then performed by professional personnel at the service center who have manual access to the mobile end station.
It is therefore desirable to provide for management of secondary IP addresses in a mobile end station without requiring the mobile end station to be transported to a service center or manually accessed.
The present invention provides for management of IP addresses in mobile end stations without the need to manually access the mobile end station or transport the mobile end station to a service center for management of its IP addresses. With the present invention, services provided via IP addresses can be subscribed to or canceled without manually accessing the mobile end station or transporting the mobile end station to a service center.